Pontypool Understanding Urban Character
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Pontypool: Understanding Urban Character Cadw Welsh Government Plas Carew Unit 5/7 Cefn Coed Parc Nantgarw Cardiff CF15 7QQ Telephone: 01443 33 6000 Fax: 01443 33 6001 First published by Cadw in 2012 ISBN 978-1-85760-297-5 © Crown Copyright 2012 Cadw is the Welsh Government’s historic environment service, working for an accessible and well-protected historic environment for Wales. Pontypool: Understanding Urban Character 1 Acknowledgements In carrying out this study, Cadw grant-aided Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust to undertake mapping and database work tracing urban development during the nineteenth century, and to identify relevant data in the National Monuments Record of Wales and the regional Historic Environment Record. The mapped data and database generated by this project is held as a digital record by Cadw and Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust. Photography for this study was provided by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, and information on some specific sites within the study area is held on Coflein, the online digital database of RCAHMW. 2 Contents Introduction 5 Character Areas 36 Aims of the Study 5 1. Town Centre 36 2. Hanbury Road 42 Historical Background 6 3. Trosnant 43 Founded on Iron: The Industrial 4. Pontypool Park 48 History of Pontypool 6 5. Pontymoile 49 The Growth of Urban Settlement 10 6. Osborne Road 51 Origins and Early Growth 10 7. Penygarn and East of the River 53 Late Nineteenth-century Expansion 13 8. Sow Hill 54 The Twentieth Century 14 9. Wainfelin 58 Landownership 16 Connections: Transport Networks 16 Statement of Significance 60 Historical Topography 21 Selected Sources 61 Cartographic Sources 61 The Character of Building 25 Published Sources 61 The Chronology of Building 25 Building Materials 26 Endnotes 63 Building Types 29 Commercial Building 29 Civic and Religious Buildings 31 Residential Development 32 Urban Residential Building 33 List of Maps pages 65–80 1. The Extent of Urban Development by 1844 6. All Character Areas (Tithe Map data on First Edition Ordnance 7. All Character Areas with Listed Buildings, Survey map base) Registered Park, and Conservation Area 2. The Extent of Urban Development by 1882 8. Town Centre (on First Edition Ordnance Survey map base) 9. Hanbury Road 3. Detail of Urban Development in Central 10. Trosnant Pontypool, Sow Hill and Trosnant by 1882 (on 11. Pontypool Park First Edition Ordnance Survey map base) 12. Pontymoile 4. The Extent of Urban Development by 13. Osborne Road 1901 (on Second Edition Ordnance Survey 14. Penygarn and East of the River map base) 15. Sow Hill 5. Detail of Urban Development in Central 16. Wainfelin Pontypool, Sow Hill and Trosnant by 1901 (on Second Edition Ordnance Survey map base) 3 PONTYPOOL: UNDERSTANDING URBAN CHARACTER 4 PONTYPOOL: UNDERSTANDING URBAN CHARACTER Introduction Aims of the Study advice, and contribute to local interpretation and education strategies. Historic character lies at the heart of local Urban characterization defines the unique historic distinctiveness and sense of place. No two character of individual towns, and identifies the places share a history, so every place has a variety of character within them. It looks at the unique historic character, which is a powerful history of a town and identifies its expression in asset in regeneration. Responding to local patterns of space and connection and in traditions character is an important objective of good of building, which are the fundamental ingredients design; sustaining it can bring social, economic of historic character. and environmental benefits. The purpose of this study is threefold: it is intended to Urban characterization is a tool that can help contribute to a Townscape Heritage Initiative for the us use historic character to create sustainable town centre; to inform emerging proposals for broader and distinctive places for the future. It aims to regeneration in Pontypool; and to offer support for describe and explain the historic character of policies in the Local Development Plan, which are towns, to give a focus to local distinctiveness intended to sustain local distinctiveness. The study area and help realise the full value of the historic has been defined to provide specific support for work Different epochs of commercial building environment. It seeks to inform and support in the town centre and its immediate environs, whilst in the town centre positive planning, regeneration, and conservation also setting out a context for physical regeneration (Crown Copyright: programmes, help improve the quality of planning activity and planning in the wider settlement area. RCAHMW). 5 PONTYPOOL: UNDERSTANDING URBAN CHARACTER Historical Background Founded on Iron: of Pontypool by several entrepreneurs. One of these was Richard Hanbury from Worcestershire The Industrial History who ran a furnace at Cwmffrwdoer from about 1579, and had assumed control over a furnace at of Pontypool Abercarn in the Ebbw Valley later in the century. A furnace at Pontymoile (within what is now Pontypool Park) was established in about 1575–76 ‘The situation of Pont y Pool, near a region rich by John Truve, but was a Hanbury enterprise by in mineral treasures, in the midst of forges and the late seventeenth century. Another furnace collieries, and at the head of the canal, render near Trosnant (‘Old Furnace’ on modern maps) it peculiarly commodious for the establishment was leased to John Hanbury in 1698. 3 of iron manufactories; and perhaps another generation may see a new Birmingham start up in the wilds of Monmouthshire.’ 1 The conversion of cast iron into wrought iron took place in forges, which were established ‘...the town now derives its consequence from the close to the furnaces. Pontymoile ironworks mineral treasures abounding in the surrounding included a forge as well as a furnace, which country. Immense quantities of iron ore and coal operated until about 1831 when it was shut being found in the neighbourhood, and there are also down as part of a programme of improvements no fewer than 13 iron furnaces, besides tin-works, at Pontypool Park. By about 1577, Town Forge forges etc, within about five miles of the town.’ 2 was probably also in existence, immediately below the bridge close to the present town Pontypool has a particular claim to fame in the centre. There is a detailed plan of the site made industrial history of Wales, as perhaps its first in 1834, but it closed down not long afterwards industrial town and the first centre for the and its site was a park or gardens by 1881. 4 production of tin-coated iron sheets in the country. Osborne Forge, just below the bridge at Development began in the late seventeenth Pontnewynydd, was probably at least as old as century, but the area was already established as an the other two; it made Osmond or Osborn industrial centre associated with the iron industry iron, which was prized for its exceptional quality. 5 by the sixteenth century. There are documentary Later, New Forge was established immediately references to a bloomery furnace at Pontymoile east of the town centre and to the north of in the early fifteenth century. the bridge. It became known as Town Forge following the closure of the original Town Forge Pontypool lies in the valley of the Afon Llwyd, below the bridge, and it remained in operation which was rich in natural resources for iron until the 1950s. production. Charcoal, coal and iron ore were available in abundance, and the river and its These enterprises depended on a reliable tributaries provided water power. Technological supply of raw materials derived from substantial developments in the sixteenth century, notably landholdings. It has been estimated that a large the introduction of the blast furnace, enabled charcoal-fired blast furnace needed about 7,000 these resources to be exploited for larger-scale acres (2,832.8 hectares) of woodland, and a production by enterprising individuals. They leased forge 6,000 acres (2,428.11 hectares). Richard land not only to construct furnaces, but also to Hanbury acquired large areas of woodland; by extract the raw materials for iron production and 1576 he also had rights to iron ore and coal over the fuel to feed the furnaces. 800 acres (323.74 hectares) around Pontymoile, Mynyddislwyn and Panteg, as well as rights to One of the first blast furnaces in Wales was iron ore over an extensive acreage in the lordship established at Monkswood (between Pontypool of Abergavenny (Blaenavon area). The Hanbury and Usk) in 1536. In the decades that followed, family also worked coal at Lower Race, a cluster of furnaces was established in the vicinity Cwmlickey and Blaendare from the seventeenth 6 PONTYPOOL: UNDERSTANDING URBAN CHARACTER century. Coal became an increasingly important in the park by 1697. By about 1706, the part of the local economy as it supplanted production of tinplate had also commenced. 7 charcoal as the fuel for the iron industry. 6 By 1728 a new rolling mill had been built at Pontyfelin (the site of the Panteg Steelworks) to The first specific reference, by name, to activity at supply a tin mill at Pontymoile; this was probably Pontypool comes in 1665, when Capel Hanbury the first place in Britain capable of manufacturing leased ‘a parcel of waste called Pontypoole, viable quantities of tinplate. The site of this tin mill together with the forge thereon’. This was was probably at Old Estate Yard. Other tinworks probably the ironworks that was sited within were soon established elsewhere in the town, what became the park, and it was either Capel or including substantial works at Lower Mill and Pontypool Park, his son, Major John Hanbury, who built Pontypool another south-west of the bridge at Pontymoile as depicted in about Park House. Major Hanbury had established the (established in 1806, and later known as the 1860 (The National first rolling mill for the production of black plate Pontymoile Tinworks).